After getting picked up and handcuffed, you’re brought onto a bus with other detainees. You cross the “Bridge of Pain” and are escorted to your new home for the foreseeable future.“You walk in, and the first thing that hits you is the smell. It’s a very odd smell, of like, I didn’t know what I was smelling, but people would say that’s just blood, and just chemicals that they clean the blood with.”First, you wait to be processed and are held in the intake units, which can sometimes be crammed with dozens of detainees. Although you’re only supposed to be there for 24 hours at most, you may spend days inside a cramped holding cell, with a bed made of cardboard and an overflowing toilet.In 2021, detainees even had to use plastic bags for toilets while waiting to be sent to their cells. One inmate described the conditions simply: “Feces all over the wall, unoperable restrooms, toilets would not flush, the sinks would not work, it was disgusting.”Your cell isn’t much better. It has an iron toilet, a rock hard bed and no heat, which means freezing temperatures during the winter. And you’d better get cozy because there’s no guarantee you’ll even get an hour of recreation time outside of your new home.“You can’t do anything, it’s the same shit, all day, every day, day in day out. Rikers Island, you’re stuck in the house, all day bro.”But fights, stabbings or staff shortages can cancel your recreation time without warning. Surveillance footage from inside Rikers showed attempted knifings and inmate organized “fight nights” where some detainees were forced to participate.Lunchtime is mandatory. You’re either lining up at a mess hall or eating from a plastic tray handed through a slot in your cell. The food isn’t much, mainly frozen processed foods like pizza pockets and burritos.And the guards are not a fan of the milk cartons. One journalist described how a carton could become a projectile filled with urine and feces when officers served meals through cell openings.Showers are available every day in theory, but in practice, you may have to wait. Guards can cut shower time short as punishment for those who misbehave, while caged showers have even been used as temporary holding cells.Violence is always close by. You hear about slashings with homemade blades, see the aftermath of beatdowns in the hall or watch officers rushing to pull men apart.If you want to survive here, keep your head down, avoid eye contact and figure out quickly which crews run your unit. It’s a fine line to walk. You don’t want to be known for fighting, but you can’t let other inmates see you as a target.Gangs have also played a major role inside Rikers. In 2022, a former detainee described how a leader of the Dominican gang Trinitarios virtually ran an entire cellblock, making it clear that he was in charge, not the staff.“Who was running the place?” asked Lester Holt.“The inmates run the facilities,” replied inmate Benji Lozano.At night, when the lock in happens, the noise doesn’t stop. Men shout, bang on doors or scream threats. Here, sleep is a rare luxury.But Rikers’ dark history goes back much further.Before becoming one of America’s most notorious jail complexes, Rikers Island was farmland owned by the wealthy Dutch Rycken family. The city bought it in 1884 to use as a dump, then relied on forced labor from inmates at other New York City jails to build it. Rikers Island opened in 1932, and within its first decade, watchdogs had already branded it inhumane.From the 1950s through the 1970s, Rikers exploded in size and violence. Overcrowding, hunger strikes and riots became routine. By the 1980s and 1990s, the chaos only escalated, with youth suicides soaring, gangs ruling cellblocks and guards themselves rioting in protest.At its peak, more than 20,000 people were crammed inside, making it the largest jail in the United States.By the 2000s, Rikers was regularly in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Jail staff were exposed for criminal behavior, while investigations revealed excessive force, smuggled drugs, fight clubs and officers allegedly encouraging inmates to attack one another.Then came the cases that made the problems impossible to ignore.In 2010, 16 year old Kalief Browder was arrested for stealing a backpack. Unable to afford bail, he was sent to Rikers while awaiting trial. He maintained his innocence and refused plea deals.In 2013, Browder was released after spending more than 1,100 days in jail, much of it in solitary confinement. The charges were dropped, but his mother later said Rikers had “destroyed him, mentally.” In 2015, at 22 years old, Browder took his own life.Rikers continued to face allegations of neglect and abuse. In 2019, violence between inmates increased 15 percent in one year, while officers’ use of force rose almost 30 percent, reaching an all time high.By 2021, around a third of correctional officers reportedly went on sick leave. Absences without leave jumped from an average of 645 per month in 2019 to more than 2,300 per month in 2021.The jail became understaffed, violence increased and the death toll followed. Fifteen inmates died from suicide, overdose or COVID 19, followed by 19 inmate deaths in 2022.Now, the pressure to close Rikers is greater than ever. Plans call for four smaller jails to replace it, but construction has fallen behind schedule.Ultimately, Rikers Island isn’t about reform, but rather figuring out how to stay alive in a system that was built to destroy you.